If Ireland was a vegetable, it would have to be a potato - so much history, so many millions peeled in pursuit of feeding the nation. You could measure our diversification as an economy through the progress of the simple spud. Once a staple crop, it's now a stylish entree, whether served haute cuisine with milled black pepper or teased into multiculturalism as dauphinoise, gobi aloo saag or even Uncle Ronald's fries.
The spud is one of those unheralded bedrocks that make us what we are. It went pluralist just before we did, entering the recipe books as the new kid on the block. Knowing it is there to comfort us at the end of a long and trying day, we can change the past, build bridges, and enter a future where Ireland takes its place among the nations of the world.
But messing with the spud is another matter. If you can't trust a spud to be no more nor less than it has always been, then something quite basic is under threat. Which makes the controversy about Dr Arpad Pusztai's biotechnological research all the more relevant here. Critics say it's a row about method. We may think otherwise.
Dr Pusztai's concern about the spud's behaviour after a new construct had been introduced to its genes was swiftly followed by his removal from the Rowett Research Institute, a Scottish body which had recently received a donation of £140,000 from the biotechnology giant Monsanto.
That fed anxieties already simmering since the birth of Dolly the sheep, and particularly so following news of the Faustian ambitions of Dr Richard Seed, the American scientist who wants to clone a human being. Dr Pusztai was immediately muzzled: faced with such public and political fall-out, as well as the support offered to him by some leading scientists, the institute has now released his report on the Internet at www.rri.sari.ac.
The questions to be addressed are as relevant here as in the UK - whether animate material should be treated as if it were an economic commodity and whether companies which farm or produce it ought to be treated separately in terms of legislation, grants and monitoring. Product or process? We need to decide.
The issue is pressing. Already, biotechnological fruits are subjected to less than a third the trials of, for example, a new drug. Monsanto's prosecution of a Canadian farmer who collected some seed from their trial crops is one indication of how fiercely competitive this area has become.
For scientists, biotechnology is the new rock and roll.
The problem is that it has arrived too soon. Just as we thought it was safe to go back in the kitchen after the salmonella and CJD scares, the news that we have already been consuming genetically modified food through such accessory products as tomato puree, tofu and some soya feels almost like a betrayal.
Whatever about making a silk purse out of a sow's ear - as biotechnology will soon be able to do - this research crept up on us so fast we are hardly able to find a language in which to ask questions. In that we are not alone. The technology has outstripped not only consumer-speak but also that of politics, business and science itself.
In the scientific journals, the debate arising from Dr Pusztai's potatoes centres on whether it may highlight biogenetic difficulties or merely biochemical ones. Ethics are not part of a scientist's core training. Within the business magazines, the most pressing discussion is the share price of the biotech conglomerates and the pharmaceutical companies who also take an interest.
The Scottish spud was not for eating: a different set of hypotheses was at stake. But when last week Monsanto was fined for failing to exercise due care of a genetically modified rape-seed oil crop in Lincolnshire - pollen spread out of the control area - the stakes were upped significantly.
Monsanto had been among the biotechnology companies to the forefront in lobbying the EU during its recent discussions on biotechnology and the patenting of genetic material. Now, it has threatened to bypass the British government, if it calls a moratorium on genetically modified food, by appealing directly to Europe.
The issue of patenting genetic material is one of the biggest non-debates to have animated Europe. The definitions of intellectual property rights used in patenting genetic sequences remain largely identical to those used for mechanical applications or inventions. Thus if I develop a new "construct" - a genetic sequence using material from, say, a violet, a pig and a shark's dorsal fin - I am considered to have invented it in almost exactly the same way as I would have if I had instead invented a computer chip. No qualitative difference in kind is presumed.
But while I may be able to predict within reason the likely behaviour under stress of my computer chip, it is improbable that I can do so with anything like the same degree of certainty for the new construct. It may result in a neater, tastier, even healthier food but how can I be certain it will not disturb the ecological chain by damaging insects, or larger animals who feed on them, or the birds who sang to me while I watched my construct being planted?
In turn, how can I be sure it will not affect my granddaughter's genetic make-up in the year 2025?
Obviously, I would make a poor businesswoman: birdsong does not contribute to the bottom line. But in the absence of any overall ethical framework, the motives which lead to that bottom line remain suspect.
Until those issues are addressed in a formal way at national level, there is no other practical option but to put the powerful biotech business on hold.
Genetically modified food will eventually help to feed the world, according to the biotechnology companies. But if the simple spud has taught us anything, it is that food always had its own politics: the Famine was marginally related to the failure of the staple crop and significantly related to the politics of food distribution.
Unfair distribution of food keeps people starving, not a shortage of it. Unless biotech companies intend to invent a new template, every shred of historical evidence suggests that local interests will never be allowed to take priority over multinational concerns and may indeed suffer as a result. Meanwhile, the old maxim holds sway: caveat emptor.